The world's most desirable TV remote was a year and a half in the making.
Mitch Altman's TV-B-Gone is what you might call a single function remote. You point it at almost any television, and the TV turns off. It's a must for anyone who prefers the days when people actually spoke to each other when out for dinner.
Though the …

COMMENTS

Great

@ vincent himpe

Actually, although it's not quite the same, for many years you've been able to get remote controle apps which use the IrDA port of the old Psion palmtops and later on, Symbian devices like Nokia's S60. One such app comes with quite a large database of TVs, digi boxes, VCRs, DVDs, etc, and can be quite handy for controlling them or just turning them off. Of course, it's not as simple point-and-clicky as this one, but just to let you know it's already possible. IIRC the Symbian version of the product was Psiloc's irRemote.

Oh the possibilities

What EXACTLY is the point of this?

I understand some people do not like TV, but i am guessing that this device will only ever see use by pranksters. It may just make publicly available TVs use a sheilded sensor to prevent operation from outside a set area, with anyone within that area found with the device being banned for life from said premises.

Heh?

But tell you what I have got, it is revolutionary, what I have done is create a shape, where the edge is the same distance from the centre at any point.

It may have been easier had something like this existed, but here the blank sheet of paper was very useful.

I took a piece of string and a pen, fixed one end of the string to a position, then keeping the string tight, I moved the pen attached to the other end of the string, in what I like to term an 'O(tm pending)' motion over the paper.

The O should be in all good retail stores soon, and I hope others will see how versatile the application of the O could be, and it finds its way into all manner of wondrous things.

70 seconds??

So I have to stand there like a tool, waving this thing at a TV for anything up to 70 seconds before it does anything - IF it happens to have the right off code? I don't see how this is really much in the way of innovation, despite the fact the bloke looks like some sort of crazy Doc Brown.

I've got a device that took me 18 seconds to design and build. It's a brick on a big bit of string and works with almost 100% of TV sets.

What's the point?

I'm missing something here; surely this is the worlds most pointless tech? After all, most people own only 1 TV (or occasionally 2 or 3), so you hardly need a remote that'll turn off more than that model? And am I right in thinking that's ALL it does; turn TVs off? No channel select etc.?

I just fail to see the point....

...unless it's for causing havoc in a major high st. electrical goods store?

IRDA

Purpose ?

the though of actually having a conversation in a pub, without being interrupted by some deaf half wit that turns the TV to a football match or MTV and then turn the volume up full quite appeals to me.

Especially when the staff ignore the ferral football fan and say things like well hes a customer too (meaning hes a thug and can do anything he wants)

@ Stupid comments

What's the point? It's for use in bars and restaurants. You don't use it to turn your own TV off. If anyone bothered to read the blurb for the product online this would be clear.

As for an invention waiting for a market, Mitch has sold thousands of these, but it's mostly an open-source project. Anyone can buy a microcontroller and bang one together. It's a fantastic introduction to microcontrollers. Personally I favour the Arduino, since you can build many things onto one base, but the miniPOV projects are cool too.

When did the suits take over the comments page? This is cool for its own sake. Practicality is non-important, even though Mitch now seems to make a pretty good living from his tinkering.

Point of order, El Reg: "different diodes turn on and off in nanoseconds" is slightly nonsense. They turn on and off in milliseconds. Moving the article through the air by hand you need this, otherwise the entire pattern is going to be repeated a million times in each swish. Even if you could move the device at the several km/s required to give visible pixels, your eyes are not sensitive enough to see nanosecond flicker.

Been there

Been there, done that. A few years ago now, I acquired a (brand new, and very expensive -- or at least it would have been if I had paid for it) universal remote and used it to have much phun turning off TVs in Dixons.

Even more mayhem could be created by activating the child lock on the analogue satellite receivers that were around in those days.

Fun with TVs

@ What EXACTLY is the point of this?

I can think of plenty of reasons to use something like this.

I was in a pub chatting away to my good lady when the football came on, so the TV beside me went to full volume. A discrete remote would have been handy to let talk without shouting would have been good (and without being seen to yank the power cable by the sweaty scarf wearing masses)

Standing in HMV I was assaulted by one TV showing the Dark Knight at full volume (and not even seen it yet), a TV demoing some explosion filled game on top of the stores usual mix of background music fighting to be heard.

I know there are programs for S60 to control TVs but would like the discrete couple of clicks to do any tv without checking model from my phone.

Already been available for years

Huh?

""It took me a year and half of my life to get the first prototype" ... surely the first prototype is the one which can turn any single TV off, after that it's just a case of adding more to the database to tell it what to send for different TV's.

There's something seriously amiss when El Reg front-pages this as some sort of great technological or engineering achievement.

Now what about that POV display ? How long would it have taken him to do something like that ?

70 seconds?

@wize....i understand that, but read my post

If you are in a pub i would love to see you turn the telly off when the footy is in full swing. The remote may stop the telly, but it sure as hell wont pull glass out of your face or broken teeth off the floor, and it wont stop the landlord kicking you out for annoying his punters.

Likewise HMV, who would be less than impressed with your antics.

So if you hate telly that much, dont sit next to one in the pub (like, Duh!), and dont worry about them showing films on the tellies in HMV, unless you are there for a couple of hours!

As i say, the market is small to say the least and if you have 20 quid to spend on a gadget that is only as useful as the couple of minutes of peace it gets you before you get your head kicked in, then i guess it shows that your education was completely wasted.

On the other hand, it would be a good laugh to try it down the old Trafford Arms during any MANYEW match, i can hear it now.....

"gor blimey, would you Adam and Eve it? the Auntie Nelly had gone Pete Tong. That's put me right off me jewwied eews."

Bars & restaurants? HMV?

Sorry, but I don't get it. What gives you the right to stroll into a pub and switch the football off? Apart from the fact that the landlord has likely paid Sky many thousands of pounds a year for the right to show it, you stand a fair chance of being stabbed for your trouble.

It's very possible that you *personally* don't like it, but that's your hint that the guvnor is targetting a different audience and hence your cue to fuck off somewhere else where both you and the landlord will be happier.

Same with HMV - if you don't like the noisy bangy shouty shiny things, just don't shop there. It's called "choice", we've had it for some time now.

If I followed your arguments to their logical conclusion, it would be OK for me to make a little black box that switches off El Reg because I don't like your noisy comments.

Mobile phones

There is such a program for a HP 48G...

... calculator. For those unfamiliar with it, is a Hewlett Packard scientific calculator, with pretty advanced stuff inside it way before any cell phone would incorporate it. Add to it full-blown infrared capable transmission, with both input and output, a reasonably powerful programming language, there you go.

The original programmer scanned over 50 manufacturers codes, but not just the OFF switch, he copied ALL the switches. DAMN, not just that, he figured out how most of them work, so you can build your own transmission system based on it. Actually, he included in the package means for YOU to copy any remote you lay your geeky hands on. Just point it towards the IR port of the HP48 in learning mode, and voilá. If you get 3 repeated square-wave patterns, you did it. Easy as pie. Just a minor snag about 32KHz sampling frequency won´t stop you.

As far as I remember, it was built by Björn Gähm. or Björn Rhoads. I googled the first, bingo!

There is your chance to wreak havoc on the closest DVD-and-telly shop, by unlocking all the pr0n channels, or tuning all the sets to a live football match at full-blown volume.

Yes, all the remotes I 'borrowed' are in the coat's pockets... shush... I'll return them after copying...

Unwanted side-effects

What's the chance that a sequence that isn't the "off" code for a particular model of telly, is in fact the code for something else? There's only a finite number of combinations. Would you be hated more for turning the telly off, or having an unfortunate mishap and switching to QVC unexpectedly?

Remember MAX HEADROOM

@Wize

Brainwashed

When I enter public spaces like airports, stations, shopping centres etc, TVs are everywhere, mostly displaying some advertising crap of one sort or another. It's getting like Minority Report...

If so many of the above commentators don't even notice this, and are unable to think about its implications, then it's up to the few remaining critical thinkers out there to purchase or build such a device and start using it.

I can walk out of a pub if I don't want to watch the match (in deference to the rest of the customers) and but intrusive TV displays in public spaces are fair game.

@Gobot

well, actually

" is your idea of intrusive TV displays the same as mine.. or the fellow with a hearing aid?"

Well, my mum has a hearing aid, and when she goes into a shop that has multiple unnecessary sound sources playing at "blare" level (set up by 22 y o shopworkers), it's bleeding hard for her to hear what someone standing next to her is saying.

Turning everything UP isn't the answer - you want the unnecessary crap OFF so you can hear the important shit better. TVs showing the football to a pub full of people = necessary, probably loud. Cranked-up TVs plonked in waiting rooms, quiet pubs, anywhere where there are seats = not necessary, need to quiet or preferably off.

Didn't Nokia (briefly) have this?

<<Developed by an MIT Media Laber who calls herself Lady Ada, miniPOV displays text messages in mid-air when you wave it to and fro, relying on the human eye's persistence of vision. The device contains a single row of eight LEDs, but when moved, different diodes turn on and off in nanoseconds, creating that mid-air message. Or so it seems.>>

I'm sure they made a phone in the last century that, when waved, wrote a 'message'. Pity it died.

Imagine at a footy match, thousands of the things displaying "What a load of Wan*kers". Priceless

Incidentally, I wasn't aware that microcontrollers were capable (yet) of switching led's in nanoseconds. But then I'm practically geriaric, so what do I know?

HP 48

By default, it only transmitted over a few inches. So you first had to augment the range of the IR port (easy, like bypassing a resistor or something). And when people did this, HP 48 got banned during school tests, because you could transmit the answers to your pal three meters away...

I think its important to note....

Geeks like this gent are why we all work with computers today, the spirit of taking something sitting on the bench and making it do more is why we can now share information in a heart beat, play games with people from all corners of the world and stream porn from accross the globe...

The sprit of the inventive geek must never die for if it does we might as well go back to hunting with sticks and cave paintings for porn (a sadly low resolution alternative)